Examples Of Morally Justifiable Punishment

When considering the question of whether it is morally justifiable to intentionally punish someone for a crime which they did not commit, the common intuitive response of the majority of people would be that it is not. However, there are strong moral arguments that could be used to suggest that punishing someone, despite them being innocent of the crime that they are being convicted of, is morally right as it is beneficial in regards to the community and the state, and therefore it is necessary. The intention of this essay is to explore reasons for why it could be argued that it is morally right to intentionally punish an innocent person, but also why it is fundamentally morally impermissible to do so.

Consequentialism is a moral concept which

If one were to apply this principle to the case of punishing someone innocent of the crime of which they were to be committed, it could be justified if it brought about the best state of affairs for the state. For example, if punishing someone who is believed to have committed the crime, although is in fact innocent, would quash a mob which is likely to do significant damage to the state and society, then a consequentialist would hold that it is morally acceptable to frame and punish this person for the reason that it would quell the mob and prevent adverse

Thousands of young people began looting, rioting, committing arson and causing general disruption, starting in Tottenham but spreading to other boroughs in London and other cities and towns around England. Mass deployment of police also occurred to attempt to prevent any further damage. Fiona Bawdon writes in her article for The Guardian that the “sentencing rulebook was torn up and thrown away” (‘Riot sentencing put ‘nice kids’ behind bars, lawyers say’, Fiona Bawdon and Owen Bowcott, The Guardian, 03/07/2012), declaring that offenders were given much harsher and tougher sentences than a similar offence committed in a different situation the previous year. Magistrates claim that the severity of the sentences was due to the exceptional circumstances of the riots, and also because of the general consensus that crimes committed during the riots should draw harsher punishments than would otherwise be the case. The focus of the aforementioned article was to highlight the fact that punishments were perhaps out of proportion to the crimes committed, especially in regards to juvenile sentences; however, this exposes the underlying consequentialist idea that using punishment as a form of deterrent is a morally acceptable justification for punishing someone who did not commit that crime, as the harsher sentences discouraged other individuals from becoming involved in the chaos of the riots.